ELC vouchers - not as good as they seem.

[Lowfat]

Had our eye on the £50 garage with '£25' of free cars for a while, over 4 months at least. And ELC have given me a 20% off voucher for use in December.

DS got enough money on his birthday to buy it, so took garage and cars to check out, handed over voucher.

"Sorry as it's already a special with the free cars we cant accept the voucher"

Weighing up the quality of the cars (there are about 20 in the box). I told him he could keep his cars and give me the discount.

I can get 20 individual 'Realtoy' cars from Tesco for £6.60 at the moment. And they are much better quality.

So anyone with ELC 20% voucher. It wont apply if you try to buy anything with a 'Free' addition. And most of their big playsets that you would make a decent saving on with 20% off have these giveaway items.

But it does say in the T&C not to be used in conjunction with any other offer....tis fairly standard practice and many other agents do a similar this TBH...tehy are not unique

i know i wanted the garage for ds's xmas and i couldnt get the money off cos the free cars (no way are they worth £25), i ended up getting it from boots ont he 3 for 2 offer

DoNots

I suppose the trouble is the offer for the free cars has been on forever - so it hardly seems like an offer.

And they know the cars are rubbish because when I said 'Keep em, I'll got to Tesco' event the guy at the till nodded.

word of warning to anyone who is buying the elc garage .. we got it for ds2 bday back in april and it has pretty much fell apart. We have had to resort to supergluing the pieces back together and in all honestly wish we had spent more on a solid plastic or wooden one.

I got the free moon unit with the rocket and got 20% off. I was going to get the garage but then read the reviews on their website which said it fell apart so decided not to. The doors fall off the rocket apparently but we can live without doors

It is quite normal to only be able to use one offer.

I doubt very much they think they are rubbish how would they sell them?

We have the £50 garage, had it for 1 1/2 years, and it is fine.

yes this is normal anything with a free item, or already discounted you can't use the 20pc off x

We have the garage - it comes flat-packed, you have to put it together, and we used glue when we did so - no big deal. It's lasted 5 years and 3 children, going strong.

The door does come off the rocket; ds1 is 3 and can put it back on again himself. It is still way better quality than the peppa pig one (which we also have ... )

My MIL was a bit miffed cos she couldn't use two 20% vouchers in ELC. I asked what would happen if she used 5 vouchers!

Thenewme - I think the reason they are giving the cars away with the garage is because no one in their right mind would pay £25 for 20 little metal cars which come apart with a little squeeze .

All the windows are one piece of plastic under the metal shell and they are black so you cannot see the interior meaning they have not had to include seats and steering wheel etc.

You can get individual cars for 33p at Tesco at the moment which are much better quality -so they can keep their 'offer'.

Humbug

I got sent a £20 off £100 spend voucher and was allowed to use it for the sizzlin kitchen with free accessories and the bosch workbench with free tool set.

The free items from ELC are not always free, the Happyland Space Rocket is £35 in ELC and comes with 'free' moon base worth £15 but you can buy the rocket on its own from Boots for £20 and the moon base for £15, so its not free at all!

Its the same with the dolls house that comes with a free Roaming Rose Caravan.